This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Memphis theatre pulls Gone With the Wind after wave of complaints

While the film won 10 Academy Awards in 1940, it depicts a romanticized view of slavery and life on a Southern plantation before, during and after the Civil War.

Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, is no longer being shown by the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis due to its romanticized view of slavery. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios)

By Christie D’ZurillaLos Angeles Times

Mon., Aug. 28, 2017

Gone With the Wind will not be shown in the future by a Tennessee theatre that decided it was “insensitive” to many in the local community.

The 1939 movie, which marked the first Oscar win by a black actor, depicts a romanticized view of slavery and life on a Southern plantation before, during and after the Civil War.

Gone With the Wind, which won 10 Academy Awards in 1940, including for best picture, had been shown by the Orpheum Theatre Group for years as part of an annual summer movie series, according to Memphis’ Commercial-Appeal. At times, it was screened more than once a year, the paper said. This year, however, a different climate prevailed.

“The recent screening of Gone With the Wind at the Orpheum on Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, generated numerous comments,” Brett Batterson, president of the theatre group, said Friday in a statement.

“The Orpheum carefully reviewed all of them. As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves,’ the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population.”

In an interview with the Commercial-Appeal, Batterson said the appropriateness of screening Gone With the Wind had been discussed “every year,” but “the social media storm this year really brought it home.”

By Monday, comments on social media, including on the Facebook post announcing the screening, had shifted in large part to defence of Gone With the Wind as a product of its time that, despite its romanticized portrayal of the Old South and of slavery, was still part of movie history and worth showing on a big screen.

Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar win for supporting actress was a significant first, but was also “loaded with a lot of political and racial issues given that the film was the classic archetype of the Mammy,” said Adilifu Nama, associate professor of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University, speaking to the L.A. Times in 2014.

McDaniel’s role of Mammy “is fundamentally a subservient role and is part of a film that is a Southern racial fantasy,” Nama said.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com